The Boulder City Council recently approved a referendum for the November ballot to abolish the concept of corporate personhood. It calls for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution making it the law of the land that corporations do not enjoy any of the rights of persons, like free speech and the ability to spend money defending their interests in the area of public policy and elections.
Such a referendum would have no legal standing. Constitutional amendments must be initiated either by Congress or the states, not cities, and still have to be ratified by three-quarters of state legislatures. This is just another exercise in left-wing posturing in the People’s Republic of Boulder which, in the past, has declared its own imaginary policies in foreign affairs and nuclear weapons.
The Boulder City Council vote, coincidentally, took place just after Mitt Romney’s response to a lefty heckler in Iowa who angrily insisted that corporations should be taxed, not people. Romney might just as well have been reasoning with the wall when he tried to explain to the man that corporations are people. He wasn’t referring to the historical debate over corporations as legal persons or “artificial persons” as opposed to natural persons. Hamilton and Jefferson argued about that more than 200 years ago. The U.S. Code and Supreme Court decisions have long included corporations in their definition of “person” for legal purposes. That’s why the anti-corporate-personhood movement calls for a constitutional amendment to reverse this status.
But Romney wasn’t referring to legalisms. He meant that corporations are made up of people. This is irrefutable. They’re not abstract entities. All businesses start with an entrepreneur who acquires capital from people, hires people to manage people to produce a product or provide a service sold by people and accounted for by other people.
The left’s obsession with corporations as a spawn of evil is pathological paranoia. A corporation is just one form of organizing a private business enterprise for purposes of limiting personal liability, issuing stock, filing financial reports and paying taxes. Other forms include partnerships and sole proprietorships. Are they less evil? You buy your groceries from corporations, your cars, newspapers, cellphones, clothing and exercise equipment. Your parents and children work for corporations. Are they evil?
Liberals’ hatred of corporations is selective. They like the New York Times Corporation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the spawn of PBS and NPR. They like Ben & Jerry’s. And they like corporate executives with deep pockets, like the Hollywood crowd, who support left-wing causes.
The anti-corporate-personhood movement was stirred up by Supreme Court rulings in Buckley vs. Valeo and Citizens United vs. FEC, affirming the First Amendment right of corporations to spend money to influence elections. Leftists, who would strip corporations of that right, hypocritically defend the right of labor unions to do the same thing. They don’t complain, either, when liberal media corporations use their power to influence elections. The political arena is awash with money and influence from anti-business PACs and 527s. Activist groups abound, attacking businesses on everything, lobbying for suffocating regulations, myriad restrictions and higher taxes. By what twisted logic should businesses be denied the right to defend themselves in the public policy arena? Corporations represent the producer interest in society, the people who make the things that consumers and other businesses buy. Who would take their place — government?
Incidentally, it’s only an illusion that corporations — or any businesses — pay taxes. In fact, they only collect taxes. Taxes are a cost of doing business, just like payrolls, raw materials, utilities, advertising, etc. And businesses must recover all their costs from the people who are their customers. In the end, only people pay taxes.
Freelance columnist Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850-KOA.
